Tour-de-Sock, stage 4: A Song of Beads and Lace

11:26 AM

The fourth stage of Tour-de-Sock meant that it was time to learn something new again: knitting with beads. The pattern, A Song of Beads and Lace by Sarah Bordelon, is a lovely combination of, well, beads and lace in a nice straight-forward way. Beads are not difficult to work with, but I wouldn't recommend this pattern for the knitting conditions I had this round...

The pattern was released on Friday evening at 10 PM as I was returning home from Joji's class in Jyväskylä. That meant two hours of knitting time on the bus. The next morning I got on the morning train to Tampere with Young Warrior and Troll Princess to spend the weekend with my sister. Luckily, she's also a knitter, so we would sit and chat and knit away watching the kids play. Well, that sounds like I had plenty of knitting time that weekend, but on Saturday we also visited Ron Mueck's awesome exhibition at Sara Hilden Art Museum, Tiitiäisen satupuisto park, and walked around the town for 8 km (which is pretty good for 5 and 7-year olds, btw!), and on Sunday we cheered for Business Woman at the rowing nationals at Kaukajärvi. Returning home on Sunday evening, there was some travel knitting time again, but it took until Monday to finish the socks. Staying true to the name of my team, Traveling Stitchers, that is. And also to its classification as 'relaxed' - I finished 67th this round.

I wasn't going to repeat the mistake in round 3, knitting too big socks, so I decided to knit size medium. Now, the problem was that there were only sizes small and large. I went with size small, and of course the socks are too small for me. That's a shame, as I actually like the way the socks turned out, and I have to give them to someone else now. Hoping that the last two rounds will finally give me the opportunity to knit socks for myself...